Free The Jade Dragon by Nancy Buckingham

Dona Amalia’s hand directed me to a tapestry stool drawn up to the bedside, and with an equally brusque gesture she dismissed her servant.
    “How are you today, Grandmama?” I inquired.
    “How should I be?” she returned. “Exactly as I always am—an old woman who is dying.”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean.... It’s just that I want to apologize for upsetting you yesterday.”
    “Do you imagine a slip of a girl could upset me?” she snapped rudely. “I happened to have had one of my seizures. I must expect them, so my physician says.”
    “I’m sorry,” I murmured again.
    Even in bed she kept her back rigidly straight, her head lifted. She surveyed me with a look of cool disdain. “Since you are here, Elinor, you had better tell me about those parents of yours. Where did they live in England? Did your father practice medicine?”
    “Yes indeed. Papa was the doctor for a village near Bath, in Somersetshire. He was greatly respected—everyone spoke well of Dr. Rosslyn.”
    “I daresay he kept my daughter in near poverty?”
    “Not at all.” I cried indignantly. “We had a beautiful house standing on several acres of land on the outskirts of the village. Papa had his own carriage, and ... and we had a paddock where I kept a pony—”
    I faltered to a stop, realizing from my grandmother’s face that I was not impressing her. Compared to the grandeur of Castanheiros, the comfortable English middle-class life of my childhood must indeed have seemed like something very close to poverty. “We were happy, anyway,” I added in a crisp voice. “Very happy indeed.”
    “Hmmm. You were the only child?”
    “Yes. I believe that after I was born it was judged unsafe for Mama to risk another pregnancy.”
    The condessa nodded her head slowly. ‘It was the same with me. I had only the one child—your mother. Things would have worked out very differently had there been others.”
    For a while Dona Amalia remained silent, her thin fingers plucking loose a gold thread on the brocaded quilt. Then abruptly, fiercely, as if despising herself for a momentary weakness, she demanded, “How precisely was it that you lost your parents? When Stafford wrote to say he had traced you and that you were determined to come to Portugal, he mentioned something about a railway accident.”
    “Yes—it was six years ago. Mama and Papa had taken me to London for a few days’ holiday as a treat for my fifteenth birthday. We went shopping and to the theater and visited some of their friends. And then, on the journey home, there was a terrible collision. I ... I was thrown down but was quite unharmed—only cuts and bruises. My poor father was killed outright.”
    “And your mother?”
    I hesitated. Those anguished moments had remained vividly clear in my mind—the impact of the crash, the dreadful sound of splintering wood, of twisting metal, the angry hiss of escaping steam and the agonizing screams of the injured. In my memory I could see my poor mother trapped by some heavy beam that had fallen across her body, crushing her chest. Her face was a ghastly white as she struggled to speak to me. Her breath rasped, and blood trickled from her mouth. Sobbing desperately, I tried to wrench her free, until men came and dragged me away. I was held back by strong, imprisoning arms while the rescuers fought a grim battle against time to release Mama. At length, an official wearing a navy blue railway uniform had come forward, and in a gruff, compassionate voice, he broke it to me that my mother was dead.
    I said quietly to Dona Amalia, “Mama only lived for a few minutes. She did not suffer for very long.”
    In the drawn-out silence the old condessa seemed to be deep in thought. I imagined that she was feeling the poignancy of her daughter’s death, but she very soon dispelled that illusion.
    “Who were these people who took you in?” she asked in a critical voice. “Another doctor, so I understand—another man of no